Gordon Barnhart

Gordon has been consulting with organizations on leading change for over twenty-five years.  For the last eleven years, seven as President of the Compass Group, his focus has been primarily on healthcare organizations, from large physician practices to integrated Hospital Systems.

Healthcare clients range from academic medical centers and large systems to community hospitals and physician practices.  Examples include Banner Health, the TriHealth group practice organizations, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Presbyterian Healthcare Services, and Peace Health.  Non-healthcare clients have ranged across industries, for example: Microsoft, GM, GE Aircraft Engines, Procter & Gamble, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Mohawk Indian Nation.

Gordon’s recent healthcare work has focused on developing the physician leadership required to deal effectively with the emerging healthcare environment.

The focus of the consultations has included integrating physician practices, restructuring organizations, core process changes, coaching newly promoted executives, redesigning leadership style and structures, changes in clinical practice, and corporate turnarounds.

Gordon’s recent healthcare work has focused on developing the physician leadership required to deal effectively with the emerging healthcare environment. He has also helped his clients with value-purchasing, patient centered medical homes (PCMH) and integrated delivery systems.

Gordon always pursues opportunities and solutions at the individual executive level, the team level and the organizational level as they all affect the performance of an individual leader as well as the organization’s outcomes.  His consulting is “end-to-end.”  He is able to help assess current reality as well as create the design of the desired organization. He also guides the development of the required leadership strategies and tactics and supports leadership all the way to full implementation. 

In 2010 Gordon published on-line a book on leading change, Leading the Heroic Journey: Drawing on the Wisdom of Cultures Throughout Time.  The book’s focus is on the critical success factors for leaders, a roadmap about what to expect on journeys of change, the design of the right strategies and tactics, and the creation of the web of aligned leaders and followers required for success.

Gordon has a BA from Duke University and an MA from Antioch University.  He has been an adjunct professor at the Business School of Xavier University and taught in the physician leadership program sponsored by Xavier and ChoiceCare (now Humana) for many years. 

He is married to a professor at the University of Cincinnati, and they have fourteen-year-old twins.  Partly to make sure he experiences the change about which he consults and partly due to a love of music, Gordon is currently learning to play the violin.

He has been a Partner with the O’Brien Group since 2010.